Coronary stents have become a very popular treatment for cardiovascular disease, historically the leading cause of death in the United States. Stents, while successful in the short term, are subject to high failure rates (up to 24% in the first six months) due to wall regrowth and clotting, probably due to a combination of abnormal mechanical stresses and disruption of the arterial blood flow.

The goal of this research was to develop recommendations concerning ways in which stent design might be improved, focusing on the problem of pressure wave reflections. A one-dimensional finite-difference model was developed to predict these reflections, and effects of variations in stent and vessel properties were examined, including stent stiffness, length, and compliance transition region, as well as vessel radius and wall thickness. The model was solved using a combination of Weighted Essentially Non-Oscillatory (WENO) and Runge-Kutta methods. Over 100 cases were tested. Results showed that reasonable variations in these parameters could induce changes in reflection magnitude of up to ±50%. It was also discovered that the relationship between each of these properties and the resulting wave reflection could be described simply, and the effect of all of them together could in fact be encompassed by a single non-dimensional parameter. This parameter was titled “Stent Authority,” and several variations were proposed. It is believed this parameter is a novel way of relating the energy imposed upon the arterial wall by the stent, to the fraction of the incident pressure energy which is reflected from the stented region.